Changing our minds about the planet: Part 1
On insecurity and eco-anxiety
Talking about mental health on a changing planet has given us a new lexicon. ‘Eco-anxiety’, added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2021, captures worry and distress linked to the climate and the environment. ‘Solastalgia’, an older term, refers to sadness and disconnection that people can experience as the place they live transforms around them.
These concepts are part of a broader focus on wellbeing that can transform our thinking about economic and social systems. While these concerns are especially important for their impact on young people (as I wrote previously), they affect people of all ages.
Yet I wonder how many people identify personally with ‘eco-anxiety’, despite its broad scientific scope. Many of the more accessible resources and discussions on this topic are produced by and seem tailored for activists, or others who are already experiencing significant distress.
Our thoughts and feelings are layered and filtered through all kinds of social structures, including families, social groups, and careers. It’s possible that focusing on grief about the environment itself misses some of what’s going on.
I think insecurity might be a helpful extra frame for this conversation.
This post, the first of two parts, looks at how insecurity manifests in different parts of the environmental movement and, in that respect, what green office workers and street protestors have in common. The second part will widen the lens, to include people in their everyday lives, simply coping with the myriad pressures of the 21st century — in other words, to show how this insecurity affects us all.
Did someone say crisis?
Anxiety and insecurity have a similar essence: fear as a response to perceived threats. If it cannot be smothered, that fear can produce a cycle of overthinking or catastrophising. (However, compared to anxiety, insecurity can be more easily understood both as a feature of existence and as the psychological state it produces in us. Although I use it in the latter sense here, the double meaning is revealing.)
I am prone to eco-anxiety in its most obvious form: an affective response to the natural world. Landscapes readily trigger troubled feelings. The dry, brown wisps of trees during a hot summer prompt unwelcome thoughts of raging forest fires. My inner voice takes waterlogged drains or fields as an opportunity to ruminate on increasing flood risk. Even beautiful natural vistas, where the signs of crisis are absent or hidden, make me sad to think of everything we have to lose.
In the classic case, the Earth’s insecurity is clearly mirrored in our own.
It helps to find and practice ways of managing thought patterns, but it is important not to ‘pathologise’ eco-emotions of any kind — in other words, not to see them as abnormal or just an illness to be treated. On the contrary: they are typically rational responses to an irrational world. In fact, as Tori Tsui writes in WIRED, they can drive us to take environmental action or forge meaningful relationships and community ties.
From anxiety to agency
However, meeting our fear for the planet with a can-do attitude has pitfalls of its own. ‘Saving the world’ is a refrain I have sometimes heard during my career, which makes me uneasy whether it is used in a morale-boosting team talk or as a business tagline. Which emotions are concealed behind this sort of saviour language?
Emotions have strategic consequences, not least because they influence how people react to information.
’s insightful and practical essay on asks how activists can understand whether their tactics are working. As he puts it: “how do I know what evidence, and which messengers, to trust?”. Many NGOs, policymakers, and businesses trying to understand and measure their impact and theory of change should also take note.Cultivating optimism as a deliberate mindset can be powerful. Making that choice does not rule out feeling scared or anxious too. As
writes on ‘toxic positivity’ in a guest post for (a must-read newsletter in this field), “our emotions are not a zero-sum game”. Yet striking a balance is an ongoing challenge. Take Extinction Rebellion, which appears to have recently changed the sign-off in its digital communication from ‘love and rage’ to ‘love and courage’.Insecurity poses a particular threat in the context of complex systems change. For instance, different groups who see themselves as fighting climate change can end up at loggerheads when their agendas collide or the solutions they support seem contradictory. Global transformation is messy like this. It’s often said that we can’t afford not to pursue all potential solutions (Joseph Gelfer explains this perspective well). But insecurity feeds on conflict, turning up as self-doubt: are my own actions making the problem worse, not better?
In this light, grappling with eco-emotions and related thought patterns can provide valuable perspective to individuals working in the white-collar parts of the environmental movement as well as to its activists. However, it strikes me that there still isn’t much emotional support for workers in official climate institutions, green energy companies, corporate sustainability teams, or environmental consultancies and research centres.
Connecting more deeply with our feelings, mindset, and how they drive our behaviour can create space for humility — which, as Ozden argues, is a good attitude to adopt when interpreting evidence. It also allows us to better understand and learn from each other, and to make our collective efforts more effective.
Insecurity has roots similar to those of classic eco-anxiety, but unless we address it, I’d argue it poses a bigger obstacle to a sustainable and fair world.
Where to go next
Hear from people around the globe about their lived experiences of climate, via the Connecting Climate Minds hub. This important project focusing on the mental health consequences of climate change is a needed dose of humanity in the study of climate impacts.
Express yourself and find support by finding a group to share your thoughts and feelings about the planet — especially if you work on climate or nature and might not feel comfortable to discuss with colleagues. Climate circles are confidential spaces to share openly and listen deeply. One Resilient Earth, an organisation I have been supporting recently, runs one for climate workers: learn more here.
Thanks for reading. Part 2 will take this subject further, beyond the environmental movement. Watch out for that issue in the next couple of weeks.